"Here's Diamond, down below you. What do you want him to do?"The next instant many of the stars round about that one went out, and many voices shouted from the sky,--"Come up; come up. We're so jolly! Diamond! Diamond!"This was followed by a peal of the merriest, kindliest laughter, and all the stars jumped into their places again.
"How am I to come up?" shouted Diamond.
"Go round the rose-bush. It's got its foot in it," said the first voice.
Diamond got up at once, and walked to the other side of the rose-bush.
There he found what seemed the very opposite of what he wanted--a stair down into the earth. It was of turf and moss. It did not seem to promise well for getting into the sky, but Diamond had learned to look through the look of things. The voice must have meant that he was to go down this stair; and down this stair Diamond went, without waiting to think more about it.
It was such a nice stair, so cool and soft--all the sides as well as the steps grown with moss and grass and ferns! Down and down Diamond went--a long way, until at last he heard the gurgling and splashing of a little stream; nor had he gone much farther before he met it--yes, met it coming up the stairs to meet him, running up just as naturally as if it had been doing the other thing.
Neither was Diamond in the least surprised to see it pitching itself from one step to another as it climbed towards him: he never thought it was odd--and no more it was, there. It would have been odd here. It made a merry tune as it came, and its voice was like the laughter he had heard from the sky. This appeared promising;and he went on, down and down the stair, and up and up the stream, till at last he came where it hurried out from under a stone, and the stair stopped altogether. And as the stream bubbled up, the stone shook and swayed with its force; and Diamond thought he would try to lift it. Lightly it rose to his hand, forced up by the stream from below; and, by what would have seemed an unaccountable perversion of things had he been awake, threatened to come tumbling upon his head. But he avoided it, and when it fell, got upon it.
He now saw that the opening through which the water came pouring in was over his head, and with the help of the stone he scrambled out by it, and found himself on the side of a grassy hill which rounded away from him in every direction, and down which came the brook which vanished in the hole. But scarcely had he noticed so much as this before a merry shouting and laughter burst upon him, and a number of naked little boys came running, every one eager to get to him first. At the shoulders of each fluttered two little wings, which were of no use for flying, as they were mere buds; only being made for it they could not help fluttering as if they were flying.
Just as the foremost of the troop reached him, one or two of them fell, and the rest with shouts of laughter came tumbling over them till they heaped up a mound of struggling merriment.
One after another they extricated themselves, and each as he got free threw his arms round Diamond and kissed him. Diamond's heart was ready to melt within him from clear delight. When they had all embraced him,--"Now let us have some fun," cried one, and with a shout they all scampered hither and thither, and played the wildest gambols on the grassy slopes.
They kept constantly coming back to Diamond, however, as the centre of their enjoyment, rejoicing over him as if they had found a lost playmate.
There was a wind on the hillside which blew like the very embodiment of living gladness. It blew into Diamond's heart, and made him so happy that he was forced to sit down and cry.
"Now let's go and dig for stars," said one who seemed to be the captain of the troop.
They all scurried away, but soon returned, one after another, each with a pickaxe on his shoulder and a spade in his hand.
As soon as they were gathered, the captain led them in a straight line to another part of the hill. Diamond rose and followed.
"Here is where we begin our lesson for to-night," he said.
"Scatter and dig."
There was no more fun. Each went by himself, walking slowly with bent shoulders and his eyes fixed on the ground. Every now and then one would stop, kneel down, and look intently, feeling with his hands and parting the grass. One would get up and walk on again, another spring to his feet, catch eagerly at his pickaxe and strike it into the ground once and again, then throw it aside, snatch up his spade, and commence digging at the loosened earth.
Now one would sorrowfully shovel the earth into the hole again, trample it down with his little bare white feet, and walk on.
But another would give a joyful shout, and after much tugging and loosening would draw from the hole a lump as big as his head, or no bigger than his fist; when the under side of it would pour such a blaze of golden or bluish light into Diamond's eyes that he was quite dazzled. Gold and blue were the commoner colours:
the jubilation was greater over red or green or purple. And every time a star was dug up all the little angels dropped their tools and crowded about it, shouting and dancing and fluttering their wing-buds.
When they had examined it well, they would kneel down one after the other and peep through the hole; but they always stood back to give Diamond the first look. All that diamond could report, however, was, that through the star-holes he saw a great many things and places and people he knew quite well, only somehow they were different--there was something marvellous about them--he could not tell what.
